How Do You Learn Excel?
I am going to be starting my BB summer internship next month, and no little to nothing about Excel... is it possible to learn excel in a month and if so how? Do I just play around on it doing random things or is there certain areas of Excel that I should focus on?
wait for training
i'd play around with it. there are literally thousands of excel templates online for everything from excel based recipe's to stock analyzing. get the software, get familiar with the basics of how it works. u dont want to show up at your bank looking like a dumbass
Find a template for something that you would like to do. For example, there are instructions on how to build a model to pick your fantasy baseball team. Actually having a GOAL is the only way to learn excel, you cant just "play around" with it.
We had an excel training book as part of pre-work.
I would think people going to IB would already know how to use excel. I have been using it since junior high school.
Hahaha, telling an IB analyst you know how to use Excel is akin to telling Pavarotti you know how to sing.
hnazary...I don't think junior high excel counts as excel
Does anyone have one of these said templates for building a model? Would familiarizing yourself with one of these be good preparation for an SA position?
just do it once you get there
the fact is..for me its been tried and tested..if you learn excel without constantly using it everyday, your going to forget everything right away. I would advise, just wait till your training, its not like, you are going to be building models from the first day.
most finance papers i've taken require you to use excel for assignments. for instance if you have to use a binomial options pricing model to calculate values over different strikes/i-rates/t/n/stdev/div it makes life easy(ER).
you should know the basics though, e.g.formulas, editing/formatting, functions, graphs/charts
there's probably an excel for dummies book if you're that keen
I was just worried that all the other interns would know how to use it and I would be royally screwed.......
depends on your team, if your fellow interns in the team are excel and finance masters, and you are a novice, you probably won't get the offer
Well I wasn't sure if he is brand new to excel or trying to do more advanced stuff what analysts do Mr.White
Are you serious? I find it hard to believe that you've had no exposure to Excel or spreadsheets at all. If you are a complete novice, I would recommend starting with the Shelly Cashman guide to Excel, covers most basic functions and some other features. Then look at some more advanced functions in a basic excel modeling book to get a better feel for what functions are actually used.
I had absolutely no Excel experience before my internship, and by the end of the summer I was teaching other interns things. You have the internship, have fun for the next month. You will be trained on Excel once you get there, and it's not hard. Since you'll be using it everyday, you'll pick it up. Like I said in another forum, it's not about how much you know going in, but how much you've learned by the end.
gqbanker15 great insight and I appreciate the response. Definitely will take your words of wisdom
yes you can learn excel and become pretty competent in excel.. however imagine you are assigned to a team with 3 interns, the other 2 are real masters in Excel, they can do basically everything, you have to learn from a basic level all the excel skills, in this case you really have a disadvantage and probably won't get the offer!
When I have 3 interns to choose from I would rather give the menial work to the crap intern, the modeling and important jobs to the competent ones because it saves me time to check the model and to teach the intern.
In the end I probably want to have a competent analyst in my team and offer him/her instead of you although you might be a good intern assuming I and the whole team like each intern equally
it might sound unfair but this is the way it works..
You're wrong, and judging by your name, you're still a student. Please leave giving professional advice to those with experience. Like I said, GS, you'll be fine. Take my advice along with everyone else who said you have nothing to worry about. Training is called training for a reason.
I agree with gq, I doubt not knowing any Excel is going to have much effect on your performance during the summer, but since an Excel spreadsheet is probably going to be the primary interaction you will have during the summer months, it wouldn't hurt to become proficient in it beforehand.
I assume training goes over more advanced or specific topics to the internship, so it would make your like easier if you got a basic handle on the functions, menus, shortcuts, etc going in. You need to be a genius at it, but just know how to use it.
It's like being on the basketball team, you don't need to know every play in the book before the season starts, but you should probably learn how to dribble, shoot, and pass though.
True, I'm not saying don't ever open the program until you get to your internship. It may be helpful to play with simple functions and to get used to it. But I wouldn't suggest buying any books or taking any courses.
you might take my advice or not, it's up to you remember excel skills can be learned however your fellow interns can't be chosen pray to god you get weak fellow interns assigned to your team who are not liked more by the team members which you can outperform..
Why do you even post on topics like this when you have no idea what you are talking about?
Thanks and I agree that I should have a basic knowledge of Excel before the internship, which I think I can do. Student22 it sounds like you should maybe pray to god that you even get a job because it sounds like you do not really know much. Thanks everyone else
student 22 "doesn't know very much"???? And has "no idea what he's talking about"????? DON'T YOU KNOW HE'S GOING TO WORK FOR THE ALMIGHTY Goldman Sachs???????!!!1
if one is stupid that's fine, people are born stupid if one is arrogant or ignorant , he/she will be punished
Hey check this link.
http://www.usd.edu/trio/tut/excel/
I know this may be quite basic...though it might jus help.
Check it out.
Cheers.
If you have absolutley no idea what excel is about, I would play with a little of it, especially learning how to write basic formulas and how to format a sheet.
If you've got that down, don't worry about it...training will get ya caught up.
Overall just learn some basics so that the first few times you do something, it doesn't take all freakin night.
Is it true that they take away your mouse?
Some analysts/associates may take away your mouse to fuck with you, but generally it's not good to be seen using a mouse.
quickest way to learn excel (Originally Posted: 05/20/2008)
hi, before my internship starts in a couple of weeks i'd like to familiarize myself with excel. are there any free online courses or tutorials with a focus on financial modeling?
thanks
Use the search function:
Great programs are Wall Street Prep, Deal Maven, and Training the Street (TTS) along with others that are advertised on the website
Those are not free courses. It looks like you're self advertising
He didn't underline the words - the website did.
It's just some annoying web marketing program.
web marketing was underlined - that is classic. I had a class that was purely financial modeling with Excel. It was unbelievable. Macros, VBA, Custom Formulas and the like are now part of my arsenal. Check out the text book and follow along with the lesson plan. There are obviously some sections of the book that won't apply too much to banking (leasing / portfolio management) but some that are the bread and butter of what you will be doing.
http://www.Amazon.com/Financial-Modeling-Using-Excel-Finance/dp/0471267686 Financial Modeling Using Excel and VBA (Wiley Finance) (Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0471267686
Contact Analyst Exchange and attend their free webcast on financial modeling. I did last month, it was very helpful.
Trust me, there is no point in starting early.
As someone who did the BB thing himself...
docstoc.com, and search financial modeling, or lbo, or any other number of terms; you'll get some good stuff to comb through
Good books to learn Excel? (Originally Posted: 05/27/2008)
Anyone have any suggestions? Would like something that covers from basic to advanced.
Also, do traders need to use VBA in Excel?
Financial Analysis with Microsoft Excel by Tim Mayes will provide a basic background that is helpful.
Probably more useful is Building Financial Models by John Tjia.
Learning Excel for the prospective Investment Banker (Originally Posted: 03/13/2014)
As we all know, an understanding of Excel in Investment Banking is a requirement for entry level roles. How did you guys learn? Was it through books? The internet? A course? Please share.
Being good at excel for banking consists of being able to do a relatively small number of things quickly. If you can be proficient at formatting, charts, and a few formulas for manipulating data, you'll be in a pretty good spot.
You honestly should not worry about "learning" excel for investment banking. You should have good excel knowledge like any finance student, but learning beyond that (i.e. trying to learn more shortcuts, trying to make yourself quick at the ones you know by "practicing") is a total waste of time. You will learn more in 1 week on the job than you could teach yourself leading up to that time. And even if you could teach yourself all those smaller details before you showed up, no one would care that you had slightly better excel knowledge starting out (b/c as stated previously, everyone will even out after a week or two).
This is a question you see a lot (and one I had myself before I started, I tried to memorize shortcuts and stuff) but if you're asking it, you're a little bit missing the forest for the trees. The more important things (BY FAR) are communicating well with your team, being reliable to give mistake free work and asking questions when you have them instead of spinning your wheels for hours etc. Those are the things that really matter for being considered a good analyst. No one above VP will have any idea about how many short cuts you know or if you can do a model 5 minutes faster than someone else. And more importantly, they won't care, unless you are SO bad that people are talking about it like you're in the circus.
If you want something to do before you start, ask someone you know for a 3 statement model and just walk through it to make sure you understand conceptually how it works and what the key drivers are. Being able to build a model like that and take a step back and look at it at 5000 foot level to see if it makes sense and what it's telling you is the truly important stuff in banking. Taking that modeling and drilling down to 5 feet high level of what shortcut someone used to shave 10 seconds off formatting the income statement is what really doesn't matter (despite what you think in college and what people often focus on here). Not to say you shouldn't prepare yourself and you shouldn't learn everything you can when you hit he desk, but focusing on really small stuff before you start is not how you should do it.
Great advice, thanks.
Learning Excel - Internship with FINRA for the summer (Originally Posted: 02/24/2008)
I have an internship with FINRA for the summer. For the internship, it's required that I'm proficient in Excel. Problem is, I'm only a college freshmen and could perform some basic tasks on Excel such as charting and graphing but would like to learn more before the start of the internship. Could you guys recommend a website where I could learn some more besides charting and graphs?
I interned there last summer, the excel work is rather basic, I was actually teaching them how to do a majority of functions
Have any advice for me? I'll be an intern in equities Market Reg.
Learning Excel - Good book that teaches excel? (Originally Posted: 10/23/2006)
Can anyone suggest a good book which teaches you how to use excel. Something which is like contains pretty much everything i would need to know. I know the basic stuff but i need to learn advanced things which will help me with the activities i perform as a banker...Any advice will be appreciated...Thanks
you will learn it all within the first week on the job, then bits and pieces here and there, i dont thinks its necessary to practice before you start working
and nothing will make it stick like repeating over and over again.....
Beninga - Financial Analysis. Only about 1/4 of the book applies to IB. Better would be to do the Dealmaven thing if you want. But if you you go to work for a BB it will all be redundant.
The reason I am asking for this is because I saw many internship postings which described that "extensive knowledge of Excel" is expected or something...and since i dont really mind doing extra work...
well you will learn all you need on the job as others have mentioned. it helps to be familiar with the basic functions going in but you dont need to know how to extensively model
What are these functions? Is there a website that lists them for some practice?
Learning excel - Halfway through training at a BB (Originally Posted: 08/11/2007)
Hi guys,
I'm halfway through training at a BB in NY and this week we used excel for the first time. I am one of the only ones in the class who has never used excel, and I suck at it. It took me about 3 times as long to do the same stuff as the other people who had done internships or other experience using excel. We don't really have any exposure to excel to speak of during the rest of training, so my skills aren't going to get any better until training is over and I start using it every day. I don't want to start off on my desk as the "slow analyst" who can't use excel, so I'm hoping to at least improve my skills before then and master the basics. Any suggestions for tutorials or something along those lines that will help me become proficient in navigating, formatting, frequently used shortcuts, etc?
Thanks, Luke
The best way to learn is to open it up and play with it. Start trying to create things. If it helps to motivate you, try to model out your personal expenses or anything else that may prove useful or cool to you. Don't use the mouse!!! Make it look pretty and organized.
Also, try to use a variety of functions. Create if statements, be creative. Concatenate different cells. Append text to number cells.
There are so many things you can do and the best way to learn and remember them is to struggle and figure them out on your own. Just dig right in and you'll pick it up quickly.
Luke, you were smart and hard-working enough to land a BB - you'll master excel in no time.
My SA internship was similarly intimidating.
more often than not formatting is what people look at...if that's off, then they won't even look at your numbers...try typing a word in a box and figuring out how to change it's color, it's background, it's border, it's font, it's style, etc.
learning some excel skills (Originally Posted: 06/30/2010)
i have very basic knowledge of excel and some free time to learn more of it right now, so i was hoping for your advice on a good book or website that teaches some of the must-have excel skills for IB, thanks
try Professor Teaches Excel 2007 - google and download it.
If you have access to your school's library, Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling by Wayne Winston
Just go on YouTube and do some searches on there. I watched a bunch of videos about account and excel and DCF and all sorts of IB related things.
Regards
The M&I Excel tutorial is fantastic, although it isn't free.
just be comfortable w. excel and you'll learn everything in training or on the job.
I second what Clarkey said... M&I is a great resource... I would recommend picking up the BIWS modeling program, it covers excel functionality and modeling. Though if you are looking just to learn how to operate in excel just google a shortcut list for the year of excel you are using and start to acclimate yourself... if you post that sheet near your comp/laptop you will reference it while using excel and it will begin to give you a base to work from based on the repetition you will gain from viewing the sheet and using excel simultaneously.
try learnhowtoexcel.com. while their product doesn't strictly focus on stuff that (I assume) you'd need to know for banking, it will give you a solid base to work from as you move on to some of the other users' suggestions.
Best book/resource to become an Excel ninja? (Originally Posted: 03/12/2013)
What do you think is the best book or resource to become an Excel ninja assuming I already know the bare basics like functions, V lookups, Pivot Tables etc. (Do not know any Macros though)
Would you recommend Walkenbach's Excel book?
I am college and I wanted to sharpen my Excel skills before I graduate.
Thanks,
Check out "Practical Financial Modeling: A Guide to Current Practice." It's very good for learning to construct models without seeming like a noob. Google it and you can find a PDF version.
Thanks.
Walkenbach's stuff is the best that i've seen.
You ain't gonna sharpen your skills much by just reading a book. You'll probably forget what you read like two days later, especially if you have anything even closely resembling my pathetic noggin. You're gonna sharpen your skills by using excel a lot in sticky situations where you're literally required to know the ins and outs in order to be able to proceed. That will internalize the skills and allow you to build off of them. I suppose you could just invent these scenarios and force yourself to go through them. Going through the O'reilly book on vba would be a nice start though.
Full disclaimer: I'm kind of an excel jedi.
But does an excel ninja beat an excel jedi?
I am currently in school as well. Our school brings TrainingTheStreet staff to host class sessions on navigating excel without a mouse, different macros, financial modeling etc. TrainingTheStreet also has Self-Study programs that you can purchase on their website.
Apparently this is the stuff they use at JPM' training program
What's the best self-study guide for excel? (Originally Posted: 10/23/2013)
https://www.ttsuniversity.com/Product.aspx?c=books&n=excel_best_practice
http://www.WallStreetPrep.com/programs/self_study/excel_crash_course.php
http://www.wallst-training.com/self-study/courses.html#tech-excel
Excel is like photoshop dude. You can learn a cool trick or two at a workshop, but the easiest way (in my opinion) to just learn excel is by fucking around with it.
I took a couple 2 hour classes to try and learn excel, but I didn't really retain anything.
You should look for one of those double sided laminated excel cheat sheets. I find those a lot more helpful than the courses.
Learning Excel vs Doing Excel (Originally Posted: 09/25/2010)
Hi all,
I came across a few Excel lessons with "levels" at my school.
Now, I understand that Excel is a widely used program across Finance. I'm not too well versed in it (never really needed it), but knowing its importance, would you recommend that I take these Excel courses?
Do they bear weight on a resume? Or am I better off looking for more work experience?
Please advise.
excel courses? jeez... well, if you're getting a bus/econ degree, excel skills should be kinda assumed. i suggest you just do some independent learning. excel isn't something i would guess should affect your acceptance chances - it's a skill that someone who's accepted into consulting should be able to acquire within days or hours. most important equation i find is vlookup. learn to use it well, and the rest should be mostly aesthetic skills.
Are you talking about taking these for credit? I definitely wouldn't do that - sounds pretty ridiculous to me.
That being said, go learn excel. Definitely be able to perform most general formulas as well as vlookups. It shouldn't take you too long to learn, but will be essential in your career. You'll start way behind the curve if you don't know excel going into a FT position.
Free excel guides/videos? I have a PE internship in a week... (Originally Posted: 08/25/2012)
Does anyone know of any free instructional Excel videos that are helpful??
This would be a huge help...
Maybe even a Word one too...
Send me your email.
http://www.youtube.com/user/excelisfun?feature=results_main
See if you can find someone with the TTS training manuals. They're pretty good and informative, as well as being relatively easy to follow and clear to understand.
Not a salesman for TTS, I promise.
Excel Guide (Originally Posted: 07/28/2010)
Is there a good book out there that goes from beginner to advanced? Thanks.
Its called unplug mouse, research forums in WSO, and Enjoy your 110 hr WW
Simon Benninga has a good book. One you should definitely get is from Mr. Excel (John Walkenbach) http://www.quantnet.com/master-reading-list-for-quants#excel
Books combining finance and excel
Financial Modeling....Simon Benninga Excel Modeling and Estimation series....Craig Holden (they are sort of companion books to widely used finance textbooks in corporate finance and investments classes) BIWS has a course/module. And like Bulge said, I thought it was interesting when I first heard (from BIWS) that you should unplug your mouse and figure out how to do everything using just the keyboard. Build Business Spreadsheets using Excel....AMT (Adkins Matchett & Toy) Wall Street Prep excel module
Excel for dummies
Thank you guys. Will look into them.
Excel books for IBD? (Originally Posted: 03/28/2008)
Could anyone recommend any good Excel books that would be helpful for an IBD SA?
I know SA's are trained, but I'd like to find something to familiarize myself with excel and financial modeling before summer.
Thanks
we had to read/do the exercises in this book before the summer when i was an SA in IBD. I personally found most of it pretty basic but depending on your knowledge of excel it could be helpful
http://www.Amazon.com/Build-Business-Spreadsheets-Using-Excel/dp/189111…
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